MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Theatre Review: As You Like It
There’s little to like in this Shakespearean comedy which, played relentlessly for laughs, ignores its sexual ambiguities
Playing for laughs: Lucy Phelps (Rosalind) and Amelia Donkor (Silvia)
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ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
As You Like It
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Stratford-upon-Avon
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, no great Shakespeare fan, claimed sardonically that children would enjoy the virtue and philosophy in As You like It while adults would be delighted by the pageantry and wrestling.
Kimberley Sykes’s production, opening the new RSC season, certainly delighted an audience determined to enjoy something in these gloomy Brexit days.
Anchoring the show around the much-quoted line “All the world’s a stage,” she sets the play seemingly backstage with the action resembling a rehearsal session for an upcoming pantomime. The main prop is a costume rack from which the cast members appear to have made their own choices.
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